


she was human

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-03 06:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19458265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: Amanda isn't the only human in her household anymore.





	she was human

**Author's Note:**

  * For [engmaresh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/gifts).



> Written for Not Prime Time 2019.

As long as Amanda had known him, she had known that a relationship with Sarek of Vulcan would not be like one with a fellow human. 

He had always been somewhat different from other Vulcans--he had a certain appreciation for those who were not like him, and for humanity in particular, that Amanda had not seen in many of his kind. And yet, even after so many years of marriage to a human woman, he often didn’t seem to understand what a human woman would expect, would need from her life partner when something went wrong.

She knew something had gone horribly wrong now. She had seen it in him--to most people, Sarek appeared emotionless, but over the decades they had spent together she had learned to read him. He hadn’t said anything to her, instead had shut himself away to meditate. If Sarek did know anything, he wasn’t going to tell her until he was ready. Even after all these years, he often didn’t tell her these things. 

So she was left sitting in the living room, picturing every awful thing she could think of--Spock in pain, Spock alone, even worse things--as much as she had tried to protect him from Section 31 and from whatever was going on inside his mind, after all of that, had she failed him? She remembered what she had learned from his medical records--phrases like _lack of empathy,_ ironically calling her son heartless while those documents themselves seemed so cold and unfeeling and unknowing of who he really was. 

There Sarek was. Standing in the doorway of the living room, looking down at Amanda. She leapt up and went over to him--he looked ever so slightly pale, she realized. Something really was wrong, but of course she couldn’t let him know she’d noticed. Most people probably wouldn’t have.

“Something has happened to Michael.”

It was Michael’s mother.

Her birth mother. The woman who had raised Michael for the first nine and a half years of her life before being brutally murdered by Klingons.

It had barely even been a week since Amanda had last seen Michael and it seemed like so much had happened. She had been so preoccupied with what was going on with Spock--admittedly for good reason--that it hadn’t even occurred to her that Michael might need her too.

And now, Amanda was standing in front of their holographic projector as her daughter, light-years away on the USS Discovery, told her what had happened. How Michael had found out that she was the figure behind the mysterious red signals. How she had decided to essentially use herself as bait for her own future self. How Gabrielle Burnham had stepped out of the winged spacesuit. How Michael had thought she had come up with a plan to keep her mother with them--but the plan had failed. Dr. Burnham was gone.

How her mother had been lost again and it was, according to her, all Michael’s own fault.

* * *

It had been Sarek who had first suggested adopting another child, when the two of them had heard about the attack on Doctari Alpha. Amanda had agreed, but she never told him about her guilty thoughts that perhaps a fully-human child would be easier her for her to know what to do with, to relate to, that what she had with Spock hadn’t exactly been what she’d imagined when she’d thought that one day she’d become a mother.

They offered to take her in, this little nine-year-old girl, Michael Burnham. For days, she mostly sat in her new bedroom, hardly speaking, hardly eating. 

Amanda had seen her looking up at the stars not with wonder, but with fear, with anger, with sadness. And yet still, she was looking, as if there was still something out there some part of her deeply wanted to see.

At first, Amanda believed Michael was afraid of what was out there, now that she had seen the Klingons come down from the stars and destroy the family she had known.

“But there is much more out there than that,” Amanda told her. “The stars brought me to Sarek, and gave me Spock, and our home.

“The stars brought me you, Michael.”

But looking at Michael, Amanda knew she hadn’t gotten it all.

When her score on an exam came back as _unsatisfactory_ , Michael didn’t tell them. Sarek found out from one of her instructors.

Michael hadn’t seemed to want to talk much about school lately, in general. True, she hadn’t talked to them a whole lot about anything in the time she’d been with them so far, but by that point, she would at least tell Amanda about what she’d learned in school when Amanda asked, instead of brushing her off or changing the subject. 

The last time Amanda had checked Michael’s grades, they had been fine--not so good at the beginning, slowly improving as she adjusted to her new life, finally starting to show her true intelligence and ability. What had gone wrong?

“I’m… concerned about Michael,” Amanda said to Sarek after the children had gone to bed. Sarek raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “She’d been doing so much better in school lately, and she’s never just outright failed a test like this before…” _And if she needs help, I want to do everything I can to make sure she actually gets it, when she needs it, not like last time._

“Michael is an intelligent girl,” Sarek said. “She has already demonstrated as much. She merely needs to properly apply herself--to _all_ her studies, not only the academic.”

“You’re talking about her meditations. Her work on her emotional control.”

“It is not an inability to learn that is giving her trouble here, nor her memorization of the material,” he said. “Nor is there any lack of intelligence on her part. The subject matter she was learning triggered an emotional response which distracted her.”

“Subject matter?” Clearly he’d been told something, by someone, that she hadn’t. “What are you talking about?”

“Her instructor informed me that the questions she failed to answer dealt with the Klingon Empire and the attack on Doctari Alpha.”

The very attack in which her parents had been killed. _Obviously this changes things. I thought there was more going on, and I was right._ Of course Michael was going to have trouble with a lesson like that. It hadn’t even been a year since it had happened.

And although Amanda hadn’t been there for whatever Sarek had told Michael, she knew it couldn’t possibly be enough to really help her. Amanda doubted whether she herself could ever do enough--whether anyone really could--but if Amanda felt she had trouble understanding a lot of what Spock was going through… 

“I’m going to go talk with our daughter.”

“I have already done so. She understands her error, and intends to work harder at her emotional control. I will assist her in doing so.”

 _Does she understand? Should she?_ “I still think it would be helpful for me to talk with her, too. I want to make sure she’s all right.”

Sarek raised his eyebrow again. “You realize such a talk could be counterproductive, to what I and her instructors are trying to teach her.”

 _I know she can’t possibly learn anything like this._ “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and walked out of the room.

“Michael?”

Michael sat on her bed, staring down at a book open in front of her. Amanda stepped inside the room; Michael continued to stare determinedly downward.

“Michael, I want to talk to you about what happened earlier.”

Michael still didn’t look up. “I already talked to Father about it,” she said. “It won’t happen again. I’m going to get control of my emotions.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Amanda. She sat down on the bed next to her daughter. “But, Michael… you shouldn’t feel bad that you haven’t. You went through something that most kids never have. Human or Vulcan. It’s perfectly natural that being reminded of it should bring up feelings--”

“Not here.” She looked up from her book at Amanda. “All the other kids in school have been working on it for years and they look at me like I’m a freak or something. Father said--he said my human heart was the problem. Maybe he was right. Maybe if I could stop having feelings like all of them I wouldn’t care how they looked at me.”

Not for the first time, Amanda wondered if she and Sarek had done the right thing by bringing Michael here. What were they teaching her? That something was wrong with her for reacting to what she’d gone through in the way that any human child would? That she should just be able to get over her parents being killed in front of her?

Amanda didn’t want to undermine her husband, but Michael was a child. She had no one else.

“Do you want to know a secret? But you can’t tell your father I told you.”

Michael nodded slowly.

“Vulcans do have feelings,” Amanda said. “The reason they hide them is because sometimes, the feelings get too big, and they get in the way. Sometimes, they could even hurt other people. So they keep their emotions under control. It’s something they have to work at, just like it is for you.”

“Because if I have too many feelings it might hurt people.” Michael nodded. 

_Wait, no, that wasn’t what I meant her to take away from this!_ “That’s not something you have to worry about right now, Michael. I don’t want you to be too hard on yourself, that’s all. I want you to do well in school, and I know you can, and I’m here to help you if you need me.”

Michael nodded. Amanda looked over Michael’s shoulder at the book she’d been reading. She couldn’t make out the words, but she saw a picture of some kind of long-legged, purple-skinned alien, and another that looked like a human but with bright red eyes and extremely thick eyebrows.

“What’s that you’re reading?” Amanda asked.

“It’s for school,” Michael said. “About alien species of the Alpha Quadrant.”

Amanda remembered being told that Michael’s biological father had been a xenoanthropologist. “Is that something you find interesting?”

Michael smiled, before seeming to catch herself. “Yes. My… my dad had a lot of books about stuff like that. Mostly they were grown-up books. Sometimes I read parts of them anyway.”

Amanda smiled slightly. “That’s very good.”

“They were different from this one, though.”

“Oh?”

“This one keeps calling a bunch of alien traditions illogical.”

“Well, I suppose it would,” Amanda said. “Honestly, most species can’t be logical all the time. Of course, they wouldn’t see it that way, and there’s nothing wrong with any of it.”

“That’s not what they think, though.”

“What’s not what who thinks?”

“Everybody at school. The kids. My teachers… Father, sometimes.”

An idea came to Amanda. She had used it before, in an attempt to help Spock find his place in this world that wasn’t really made for him. She wasn’t sure how much it had helped, but he’d seemed to like the story, at least.

“Wait here a minute. I have something that you might like.”

When Amanda came back, she was holding a book, one that had clearly already been well-used. She brought it back over to Michael on the bed, showing it to her.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Michael read, looking down at the book’s cover.

“Have you read it?”

“No, but I heard of it.”

“It’s about a little girl, a bit like you,” said Amanda, “who finds herself in a world where up is down, and left is right.”

“That’s silly,” said Michael, smiling.

“It is,” Amanda said. “But the people who live in that world don’t see it that way. They think it’s all quite logical.”

They started reading the story together, a little bit each night before bed. Michael listened intently to Amanda as she read the book out loud, almost seeming to lose herself in the story just as Alice had been lost in Wonderland. Amanda tried to ignore the twinge of guilt she felt when Spock overheard them, _this was their special thing before Michael was even here,_ and her thought that perhaps Michael could appreciate this story in a way that Spock never would.

When they finished the book, Michael wanted to hear it again.

When Michael’s tenth birthday came around, Amanda arranged for the two of them to attend a book exchange on the seventh moon of Eridani D. She had seen Michael looking at a poster for it near the learning center, and asked if she would like to go to something like that.

“Yeah, I really--” She broke off mid-sentence. “Yes, I would find that… quite interesting.”

 _A human tradition_ , Amanda called it, but when they stepped off the shuttle, they found themselves surrounded by people from all over the Federation. More humans than anything else, but still plenty of other species. Michael kept a tight hold of Amanda’s hand as they walked through the crowd, looking at the array of books displayed over tables and on shelves.

Amanda had brought some old books she’d long since finished with to trade. She exchanged one of them with a friendly-looking round-faced man for the next novel in a series she liked. A short woman with bright pink hair traded her a book on alien languages for a biography of a 22nd-century Earth musician.

Michael tugged on Amanda’s hand. “What about this one?” 

Amanda followed her towards another table. There, Michael looked over a row of books, before pulling one out and starting to look through it.

“Can we get this one, Mother?” she asked.

“What is it?”

Michael showed Amanda the cover-- _New Civilizations: Humanoids From Other Worlds._

“Found something you like?” the tall white-haired woman behind the table asked. 

Michael nodded. “Would you like this one?” She took a book out of her bag, a history book she’d used last term at school that she wouldn’t need anymore.

The woman took the book from Michael and looked at it. “Vulcan?” Michael nodded again. “Very nice. Go on, then.”

Michael put the book she’d been looking at into her bag in its place. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re quite welcome,” said the woman. “Enjoy your reading.”

As soon as they got themselves settled back in the shuttle, Michael pulled out her new book and started to read. The two of them sat in silence for a little while before Michael looked up.

“So this part is talking about the Saurians, and how their sense of smell is more important to them even than it is to humans. Like, we can smell a flower and think, that smells good, or this kind is different from that kind, but they can tell way more, like how old the flower is or if the plant’s been watered enough recently. And if you give someone a flower from a plant you haven’t taken proper care of, it’s kind of insulting.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Amanda. _She really did seem to end up enjoying this trip._

There was a pause, then Michael said, “Do you ever wonder what they’d write about us? Like, about humans, or about Vulcans, what would the Saurians think about what we’re like?”

“I don’t know,” Amanda answered. “But I’m sure they’ve written their own books on the subject. Maybe someday you’ll read some.”

Michael went back to her book. Amanda watched for a few moments before speaking again.

“I’m glad to see you seem to be really interested in something again,” Amanda said. “It's--” She realized Michael wasn’t smiling anymore, but looking at her with an almost fearful expression on her face. “What is it? What’s wrong, Michael?”

“I--nothing,” she said.

 _That obviously isn’t true._ “You know you can tell me.”

“I didn’t tell you before,” she said. “I thought--” She stopped talking, shaking her head.

“You thought what?”

She mumbled something Amanda couldn’t quite hear.

“What’s going on, Michael?” Amanda was really starting to worry at this point.

“I thought you wouldn’t want me anymore if you knew.”

 _What?_ Amanda immediately felt awful that she might have done something to give Michael that impression--or perhaps allowed others to do so? “What ever could have made you think that?”

“My mom and dad died because of me.”

“What are you talking about?” _How can that possibly be true?_ It couldn’t be. Michael had been a child--what could she have done to cause Klingons to murder her parents? What could she have been expected to do to stop it? Maybe Amanda should have realized something was wrong earlier, should have done something, should have let this little girl be brought up somewhere, anywhere else with two parents who were equipped to handle something like this.

“I--I wanted to see the supernova on Doctari Alpha. We were all going to leave but they said we could stay because I wanted to see it because I read a book about them and it sounded so cool to actually be able to see one. And--and then the--the Klingons came and--” Michael started to cry. Amanda pulled Michael into her arms.

“That does not make it your fault,” Amanda said. “You couldn’t have possibly known they would come.”

Amanda held her daughter close to her, stroking her hair as she cried, as the shuttle piloted itself along the route back to Vulcan.

* * *

As she stood in front of the holographic transmission of Michael, Amanda wished she could hug her then too. She might not be able to solve all of Michael’s problems now, any more than she had when Michael had been a child--but she could let Michael know she was loved. That was her most important job, always had been.

“You found her,” she settled for saying. “You will find her again. That is who you are.”


End file.
